Thinking Big About the Ancient World

Catalog description

The "Ancient World" is a powerful category of social thought and cultural analysis that appears to designate a period of time - albeit, millennia - in a neutral, self-evident manner. In fact, it distinguishes between remote and current forms of human experience, while simultaneously defining a relationship between the two. For some, the Ancient World is an origin of civilization; for others, its ways of life exemplify what we have left behind; for many it still designates a "Classical World' of Greece and Rome, privileged for study because of its presumed exceptional status. However defined, the "Ancient World" helps create a sense of who we are today and so is constantly remade and reinvented. Thinking Big about the Ancient World means looking for new answers to questions presumed to have special relevance to modern history, including the promise and perils of globalization (Are pandemics inevitable?); social inequality (Do states make or eradicate poverty?); and environmental crisis (Was there an Early Anthropocene?). What can we learn from studying the collapse of ancient civilizations, as we contemplate the possibility of the collapse of our own?